“Beat the drum and hold the phone, the sun came out today! We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.”
– John Fogerty, Centerfield
Baseball’s Opening Day is filled with optimism. Each team starts 0-0 and has a chance to win the World Series.
Marketers don’t have the luxury of a clean slate. Every day is a push to improve on yesterday’s results.
Despite that difference, baseball teams can teach marketers a few things about fielding a team and winning campaigns.
1. Field a team of big-time players
Content is competitive. Blog posts that rank high in search and earn clicks have original, engaging content. Considering 28 percent of large companies operated a blog in 2012 (a 5 percentage point jump from 2011), it’s not easy to rank in the top results.
Set yourself apart by assembling the best lineup of writers you can. Interview customer service employees to find the FAQs of customers. Ask members of the sales team the concerns of prospects. Let a member of your product team discuss your company’s latest innovation.
Let those people write the post, have someone ghostwrite it or interview them on video.
2. Scout the competition
Scouts are a baseball team’s eyes. They scout the competition’s players to learn from their strengths and exploit weaknesses.
Social media allows you to not only scout the competition but to see what customers and prospects want from your brand. Twitter shows real-time customer conversations about your industry and even your brand, providing valuable insight into how to better serve them. When customers follow certain boards on Pinterest or Like something on Facebook, they tell you what type of content they want more of.
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Moneyball chronicles how the Oakland Athletics relied on statistics to field a winning team.
3. Use statheads
Moneyball, the best-selling book and award-winning moving, showed the importance of statistics in baseball. Stats enable baseball front offices to make evaluations impartially.
Marketers, too, can rely on trends and stats instead of gut feelings to make decisions. From social media to email to content marketing, stats from Google Analytics allow marketers to determine what’s effective and plan for the future.
- Social Media – It may initially seem difficult to measure social’s impact, but it’s a valuable tool to master. Google Analytics, among other things, allows you to track how people from social networks enter your site and where they go. (For more ways to measure social media’s impact, follow Adam Singer’s advice.)
- Email – Most email clients can provide the most important statistics to track—such as open, unsubscribe and clickthrough rates. In his recent Vocus webinar, MarketingSherpa’s Daniel Burstein recommends monitoring these stats to determine whether you’re sending relevant content.
- Content Marketing – Tracking statistics like bounce rate, page views, unique visitors, time on page and responses to calls to action shows content marketers the performance of individual posts and the blog as a whole.
4. Have a jack-of-all-trades manager
The leisurely pace of baseball games is deceiving. A manager must know who’s coming up to bat in their own and their opponent’s lineups, where to position defenders, whether to bunt, hit and run or steal, the stamina of their starting pitcher, and which relief pitchers to warm up.
The whirlwind of activity is similar to what a CMO or small business owner faces when operating an integrated marketing campaign. It takes a strong knowledge of each platform to keep everyone on task and run a successful marketing campaign.
When possible take advice from knowledgeable members of each department just like managers listen to pitching, hitting, bullpen and bench coaches.
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Image: misconmike, pursuethepassion (Creative Commons)